


the quiet balance of wolves

by sevenfoxes



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Background Arya/Aegon, Background Arya/Daenerys, F/M, Implied Arya/Aegon/Daenerys, Miscarriage, Pregnancy, non-explicit discussion of past abuse/non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-04 05:10:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10984035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenfoxes/pseuds/sevenfoxes
Summary: Regardless of what may or may not linger between them, he knows exactly the horrible position he is putting Sansa in: her home and freedom for another interloper in her bed.  Jon cannot put her through it again.“My brother knew that the blood of dragons needed to flow in the North, and despite his misguided attempts at creating a lineage, I am starting to understand why.  Wolves and dragons were meant to balance each other."Jon is thoroughly sick of prophecies; blood is blood - spilt, it looks the same red on snow.--Daenerys and Jon make a deal.  Jon barters poorly.





	the quiet balance of wolves

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this about a year ago, back when I had read maybe 5 fics in this fandom and hadn’t realized what a common trope this was. But like... Daenerys-made-them-do-it (kinda) is pretty great. I like imagining Daenerys as the sort of woman who is pragmatic but not an asshole, so she's pretty decent in this. This is a weird fusion between the show and the books because it's set after S6 of the show, but yanks in some book characters (Hi, Aegon).
> 
> This was supposed to be angsty and smutty and then 2017 happened and apparently my brain was like, hmm nope, how about we just make everyone kinda happy? It was also supposed to be about 2K, so I pretty much failed on all levels. It's my first time writing in this fandom, so sorry if I fuck up anything too much.

 

 

Jon’s fists tighten.

“You promised me, your grace,” Jon says. Though Aegon is King in name, the Seven Kingdoms know that the one who truly rules is their Queen. The marriage between them is largely one of convenience; Aegon has shown little interest in the intricacies of ruling that Daenerys does, and it is a poorly kept secret that they do not share a bed.

Jon’s been fighting for Daenerys for nearly three years, Sansa left to run Winterfell with Ser Davos as Jon fought the twin wars with his Targaryen kin. The Lannisters had been the first to fall; the Others had been the last -- and the hardest. One of Daenerys’s dragons, Viserion, had not returned from the Wall at all, and the length of the Queen’s mourning over the beast she held in her heart as a child surprised them all.

(Jon has only recently begun to understand it, the connection between him and Rhaegal. For the longest time, only Ghost had touched those parts of him. Now, he dreams as much a dragon as a wolf.)

Though Jon speaks to her as a supplicant would, they are family, and she often shirks the formality he respects even though he has little use for Kings and thrones.

“Jon, I promised you that I would grant the North its freedom from the Iron Throne. I did not say that this freedom would come without concessions.”

“Why this?”

Sometimes, when drunk on Dornish wine, Jorah speaks of a girl that had been kind and sweet, who knew little of politics and war. The woman before him bears little resemblance to the girl Jorah speaks of, but there is still a fairness to her, which makes this request all the more obscene. “No throne in this land will sit without the blood of a Targaryen,” Daenerys says. “You understand why this is important.”

“The North would never rise against you.” Jon knows that it is more than just this, but he pleads his case regardless. “A marriage to Sansa would no more guarantee the harmony of the two realms than a lack of one.”

Daenerys had not been alive to watch the murder of most of her family, but Jon understands. He had not been at the Twins to see Robb die, at King’s Landing to watch the man he’d known as his father lose his head, but he carries their deaths just as heavily as Rickon’s. He understands the responsibility to the dead to protect the living.

It would be a mistake to believe Daenerys seeks power. It has taken him years to realize she seeks only stability. The problem, he realizes, is that she’s begun to confuse the two.

“I truly do not understand why you fight me on this,” Daenerys says, her eyes narrowing but her mouth falling into a knowing line.

Jon feels queasy; he has never thought himself to be transparent, but clearly, he has been in some regards. “She thinks of me as a brother, your Grace.”

“You do not look upon her as a sister though, Jon.” His face is still ruddy from his ride on Rhaegal, so he hopes she cannot see the flush that runs under his windburnt skin. “No man speaks of a sister the way you do of her. And despite your willful blindness, I do not believe she entirely looks upon you as a brother either.”

That takes Jon by surprise. They had met briefly as the dragons had made their way north, camped at Winterfell before the final leg toward the Wall and the white walkers. Sansa had been uneasy with Daenerys, but to his surprise, Daenerys had shown a true liking for Sansa, though she clearly preferred Arya. “I believe you are wrong, my grace.”

“I rarely am.”

“It is not done in the North. Family does not bed one another, it is not done,” Jon argues, but his heart is not in it. Though the last time he was in the North there had been something far beyond familial affection between them, touches he knew would never be proper for brother and sister, he is unsure of how Sansa looks upon him. It is common for cousins to marry in the North, but they have thought each other siblings for far longer than cousins.

Regardless of what may or may not linger between them, he knows exactly the horrible position he is putting Sansa in: her home and freedom for another interloper in her bed. Jon cannot put her through it again.

“My brother knew that the blood of dragons needed to flow in the North, and despite his misguided attempts at creating a lineage, I am starting to understand why. Wolves and dragons were meant to balance each other.”

Jon is thoroughly sick of prophecies; blood is blood - spilt, it looks the same red on snow.

“I won’t bed an unwilling woman,” Jon says. “I won’t make a woman choose between her freedom and the freedom of her lands.”

That provokes a pained look from Daenerys.

“I will not force any woman to marry a man she truly does not wish to,” she says. “I have been at the whims of men for much my life, and it is a legacy I will not continue. I know the cruelty she has suffered.” She is quiet for a moment; though she does not speak much of her youth, Jorah has a loose tongue. Part of him wishes he had been there to watch her brother burn; what kind of man trades his sister for an army? “If she chooses not to accept my offer, I will keep her as Warden of the North at your behest, but Winterfell will remain a part of the Seven Kingdoms, and your heir will inherit it upon her death.” Daenerys pauses for a brief second. “And she cannot marry.”

He had not thought of himself as the offering, though the amusement at the thought lasts for only the briefest moment as the weight of her other words sink in. He’d fought that entire bloody war for Sansa - for the Starks - to make sure they’d get to keep what nearly their entire family has died for. The thought of her disinheritance, of forcing her to spinsterhood or to birth bastards to have children - what kind of choice is that?

He stands speechless, caught somewhere between anger and indignation.

“But propose this to her. I feel her answer may surprise you.”

He shakes his head. “You promised me freedom of the North. Not this.” It had been the only promise he’d demanded of Daenerys before agreeing to ride Rhaegal against the Lannisters: the North would be allowed to leave the Seven Kingdoms in peace.

“And freedom you will have, but it does not come without costs or concessions. I know Sansa has been entertaining proposals from several houses looking to make a claim on Winterfell.” With Bran dead, Sansa is Ned’s oldest living child now that Jon has been legitimized as Lyanna and Rhaegar’s son, and though he knows many would still accept him as Lord of Winterfell without Daenerys’s intervention, he won’t take Sansa and Arya’s home from them. “If I free the North and she marries into another House, they could make a claim of secession for those lands as well.”

The world has suffered greatly under the rule of nearly everyone to sit the Iron Throne, and many wish the ways of the old, of separate kingdoms. Dragons are the only thing that keeps men in line these days, particularly those in the North. Jon is not a fool; he understands why this is advantageous to her. Granting freedom to the North while still guaranteeing their support through blood gives Daenerys a steep advantage.

“I need a strong tie to the Iron Throne, and children with the blood of dragons keeping the Wall,” Daenerys continues. “If you choose to accept this proposal, your firstborn would be heir to the North, but until Aegon or I produce a child, your second will serve as our heir.”

“No,” Jon says, and he squares his shoulders so the weight of his words will not be lost to her. This he is not willing to compromise on. “Absolutely not. I will not strip Sansa of a child.”

 _I won’t give you any babe of mine,_ he thinks, though the potency of his anger on Sansa’s behalf outweighs his own outrage. He’s lost almost all of his family to the grotesque throne on which Daenerys sits, and he would rather breathe his last breath than set any babe of his and Sansa’s upon it.

Jon wants a free North for Sansa to rule, to live and die in the fall of snow. Daenerys may request a marriage between he and Sansa, but Jon will never agree to enslave any child to the Iron Throne.

If the Dragon Queen is angry with him, she does not show it.

“The Targaryens need a line of succession, and besides your brother, only you and I remain. If it is preferable, I would allow the child to remain in the North until they come of age, but Westeros must have an heir.” She takes a deep breath, and suddenly looks years older than she actually is; some days it is hard to remember that she is even younger than he. “Truth of the matter is that I do not know if I wish to carry a child. If I even can.”

There have been whispers of a Dothraki babe lost in the womb.

She shakes her head. “It may not matter. Aegon has informed me that he wishes to take another wife. In the old ways,” Daenerys says placidly.

“What?” Jon asks, genuine surprise filling him. Though he knows there is no true love between them, he knows that Aegon respects his aunt. Targaryens of old took multiple wives, but given Daenerys's hold over Aegon, Jon was not expecting there to be any others brought into their agreement. She is not the type of woman to be one of many.

The smile Daenerys gives him chills his blood as cold as a Winterfell night. “It seems his eye has fallen on your cousin, Arya.”

Jon’s already curled fist tighten to the point where nail begins to cut skin. _Arya. His Arya._

“He’s her King,” Jon spits angrily, though nearly laughing at the words as they come out of his mouth. With any other woman, Jon would fear an acquiescence out of duty or pressure, but the one thing Arya has never given a copper over is royalty or duty to Kings; she would be more likely to refuse his offer over his status, rather than accept it. But Aegon fought beside Arya at King’s Landing and then the Wall; Jon was not ignorant to the looks they had exchanged on the battlefield, but he hadn’t even begun to entertain the idea of Arya ever marrying, let alone into the Iron Throne, a subject she had given Sansa endless grief over.

He can see it though. Aegon cares for ruling as much as Arya; they both live for the fight, for adventure and disregard for the established rule. It was a quality that Aegon seemed to appreciate - even encourage - rather than frown upon, and in Arya’s life, that has been rare. Most had tried to make her a lady; Aegon seemed to enjoy the fact that she was not one of the southeron ladies who fluttered around him in their dresses.

Even so, Arya was - is - more Jon’s sister than Sansa ever was, so it’s hard to imagine her as a woman of nine-and-ten, not the young girl who had climbed into his bed on cold nights and begged him to teach her how to hold a sword like he and Robb.

“She’s a Northern woman, a princess of House Stark,” Daenerys says calmly, and a look passes over her face, the same look she gets when pieces of her strategy begin slotting themselves into place to her satisfaction. “If you were to accept the terms of Winterfell’s secession, he would no longer be her King.”

She smiles.

“You would.”

 

\--

 

Daenerys is correct: Sansa’s response nearly knocks him right on his arse.

He had expected frosty quiet or angry recriminations against Daenerys, so when Sansa shrugs at his apologies and says, “It is not such a terrible thing, truly,” Jon is shocked into silence.

This from a girl whose dreamy sighs about marriage when she’d been a girl had been near constant around Winterfell. Arya had disdained the mere idea of marriage and romance, which had only made Sansa’s contrast seem all the brighter. The resigned tone of Sansa’s voice now sounds nothing of the excited young girl.

“You should not have to marry to be free,” Jon says, aware of how naive it sounds. He knows marriages are never truly a woman’s choice, that many marry not out of a desire to be free, but to be safe. He wants neither for Sansa. “I made this deal to ensure you and your family could keep the North, that there would always be a Stark at Winterfell, not so you’d be forced into a marriage.”

“You’re a Stark,” Sansa says, which does not make Jon feel much better. “Besides, I have married for far worse reasons, Jon.” The look she gives him is curious. “I’ve been betrothed to a Baratheon, and been forced to marry a Lannister and a Bolton.”

“Shall we add Targaryen to the list?” Jon says snappishly but not cruelly, irritation more at Daenerys and his own silliness; he bites his tongue at Sansa’s withering look. He doesn’t even begin to understand where the words come from: he has never, nor will he ever, think of himself as a Targaryen despite his new name. He was birthed by a Stark, raised by one, lived amongst them. But the thought of that somehow makes this seem all the worse. “I’m sorry,” he says. “That was unfair.”

“Did you think she would give Winterfell away? She’s clever and you bartered poorly.” Sansa shakes her head and lets out the same haggard sigh she used to unleash on Arya when they were young girls. “I’m not an idiot, Jon. Although she’s never shown ill will to our House given our history, I never entertained the idea that she’d even allow the possibility of our freedom. This is far more than I expected, to be perfectly truthful with you. She spent her life trying to take back this Kingdom for the Targaryens, she wasn’t going to let me walk away with a piece of it, and I long accepted that.”

He’d told her the night he left for the Wall the promise Daenerys had made to him should he fall, whispered to her across the bed they had shared while Daenerys had stayed in his chambers. Her eyes had been bright that night, but guarded. Now he knows why.

“You shouldn’t have to.”

Sansa smiles sadly. “When has this world ever been fair?” She plays with her cup of wine, taking a sip of it. She once admitted to him that she drinks more because it is expected of her, rather than for the enjoyment of the taste or effect. He hates that he is pretending with her; he does not want a show from her, not ever. “Did she offer you something else? The truth, Jon.”

“She offered me Dragonstone,” Jon admits, closely watching Sansa’s face. “If you were not amenable to her proposal. You could remain Warden of the North, and I would take Dragonstone.”

“And that would come without the obligation of marriage for you.”

Jon laughs, but the sound is wounded, even to his own ears. “Only until an advantageous match presents itself to my aunt.” This is why Winterfell’s independence from the Iron Throne is so important: no one will ever be able to dictate their destiny ever again. Jon is tired of the whims of southern kings and queens, and so is the North.

There is a queer look on Sansa’s face, something caught between sadness and pity. “Have you not considered yourself in these dealings?”

He has, but he does not want to admit that he doesn’t want Dragonstone. He doesn’t want to admit the things he _does_ want lest it influence him away from what is right. He does know that he prefers not be pushed upon someone who does not want _him_. The idea of woman marrying him - laying with him - out of duty holds no appeal.

“Of course.” But Winterfell is hers, and that things that he wants begins and ends with her and Winterfell. “But after all you’ve been through, I would like to see you settled in something that makes you happy.”

“I think we can both count equal sorrows in our life,” Sansa says, which is absolute rubbish as far as Jon is concerned. It haunts him at times, the tortures inflicted on Sansa at such a young age. His losses are plenty, but it pales in comparison with the brutality Sansa has endured.

She’s quiet for a minute, finishing the last of her wine. Gods, she looks so different, even different than the weary woman who found him on the Wall, a thousand leagues from the bright-eyed girl who left for the South to become a queen. She’s older now, the quick temper and uptight nature gone, replaced with a calmness and level-headed pragmatism that Jon is surprised to admit reminds him of Catelyn. “Would it be a burden? Being married to me. Because I do not see you as a burden.”

“But you do not love me either,” Jon says plainly.

He’s nearly knocked on his arse for a second time that night because her reaction - before she catches and schools it - looks like… fear. The last time he saw it on her face was the day he left for the Wall on the back of a dragon.

“Remember that night? In the tent, before you took Winterfell?” Jon has been fighting so long that most of his days and nights spent plotting battles, fighting and spilling blood have blended together, but he still remembers that night, how his blood had frozen near solid at the frightened set of her mouth as she told him she would not return to Winterfell alive if he fell, how she bristled at his promise to keep her safe from Ramsay. “I’ve had endless men make promises to me, Jon. About safety, happiness… whether I would see his face again. I’ve never had one keep them until you.”

“Sansa.”

“Robb left me to the Lannisters, Tyrion abandoned me, Littlefinger bartered me off like a prize broodmare, Ramsay…” Sansa takes a deep breath. “Even when I was horrible to you, I knew you cared for me. Loved our family even though we often punished you for a sin that was never yours, regardless of who your parents really were. I took it for granted for so long, the depth of your forgiveness. You had no reason to protect me, but I knew riding to the Wall that you would.” Her eyes are glassy. “You’re all I have left, but that is not why I would choose you.”

The door makes an empty sound when it closes behind her.

 

\--

 

He dreams that night of the way Sansa sat beside him in front of all the Northern Houses, arguing his claim to Winterfell over her own. Of her smile at the declaration of the Houses to honour him as their king.

It is a dream he has had many, many times since that day.

In his dreams, he takes her against the wall outside the main hall, the sounds of the lords and Lady Mormont drifting through the the airy passageways. He shoves up her skirts and grapples with her smallclothes as she kisses him, open-mouthed and willing.

 _Don’t ever leave me_ , Sansa whispers into his ear as he presses into her.

He wakes to sticky bedclothes and a flood of shame.

 

\--

 

Jon is not proud to admit that he avoids Sansa the next day, carefully keeping his distance as she manages the household. He has not been proud of any of his dealings with her at all since his return from King’s Landing, stilted in a way they haven’t been since reuniting at the Wall. The warmth between them since their reunion had been so different from the quiet distance of their childhood that it’s strange to go back to that, to not knowing what to say, to silences that are uncomfortable.

Of all the Starks he’d grown up with, Sansa had always been the most distant, the least that felt like a true sibling. He’d cared for her all the same, but she’d taken after her lady mother with such dedication that her coldness to his existence had seemed like an extension of her mother’s. Robb had always told him that Sansa’s love was different than Arya, Bran, or Rickon’s, and when Jon watched her with her other siblings, cross and motherish at times, he’d begun to understand it.

But as much as she was distant, there were small kindnesses, hidden from her mother, that he remembers. Small gifts tucked under his pillow and in his boots on his nameday, given without credit, but signed with Sansa’s hand given Arya could not begin to sew with the skill needed to make the gloves or fur-lined clothes she left him but refused to acknowledge. Sliced Dornish apples left on the end of his bed when he took sick with fever, the only thing he could tolerate as his body burned up. How she always gave him half of her lamb pie when old Nan made them because they were his favourite, claiming she couldn’t eat a whole though he knew it to be a lie.

While Arya’s love was given loudly and freely, Sansa’s was always quieter and more restrained.

It had made their reunion at the Wall all the more strange for the depth of open affection, especially in the aftermath of the horrors she had suffered, the years of abuse. Instead of making her cruel or closed to him, it had opened her up like a flower; they had spoken more to each other in a few moons than they had in almost the entirety of their youth. Somehow, in the horror, she had managed to not only survive, but flourish.

Which had been the start of his problems. Tormund had noticed it first, before Jon’s parentage had been revealed, which had genuinely frightened him. The enormity that he felt for her and his failure to hide it; he had loved her long before his blood had made it acceptable for him to, and every time he looks at her, he wonders if she can see it written all over him.

Despite his efforts to avoid her, Sansa finally tracks him down after he has retired for the evening in her parents’ old room. It had taken him many, many moons to stop speaking of Ned Stark as his father. Catelyn had never been a mother to him, but he’ll always think of Ned as his father in many ways. It’s this, rather than any true regard for Sansa as a sister, that makes his current feelings for her difficult.

“I won’t accept it,” Sansa says resolutely, “if it is not what you wish.”

Jon takes a breath. “If you don’t accept, she will not permit you to marry,” he says shamefully. It sounds even crueler coming from his mouth than he anticipated. “I told her I won’t take Winterfell, that it’s yours, but she’s insistent that the heir be mine.”

“I see,” Sansa says after a moment. It has taken Jon years to realize that the girl he had known growing up has disappeared almost entirely into the woman the world has made of Sansa. The girl he left behind before taking the Black would have been more than cross, and the young woman who met him at the Wall and brought him home would have likely picked up a sword herself. Instead, Sansa asks him quietly, “Don’t you wish to marry of your own choice as well?”

Jon freezes. He can’t admit that whatever grew between them upon their return to Winterfell was nothing close to familial for him. That the errant touches between them after they retook the North were more than comfort, that mayhaps he had placed more importance in the slide of her skin against his than she did. That he’s been in love with her since the night they last chastely shared a bed, the night he made her the promise of a free North, before he rode out to the Wall on the back of his dragon and left Sansa his direwolf, not expecting to return.

(Ghost is more hers now than his; Ghost had stayed in Winterfell with Sansa during the siege at the Wall, and refused to leave her side when Daenerys demanded Jon’s return with her to King’s Landing. In the South, Jon had slipped into Ghost’s skin at times, watching Sansa sleep from across the bed, enjoying the feeling of her fingers slipping through soft fur as she sat near the window.)

But Sansa has been carrying the weight of too much for too long. Mayhaps it is Jon’s turn to be truthful.

“I wish to live and die in Winterfell,” Jon says. “I want my children to grow in its walls and sleep in the same rooms that Robb and I did as boys. I want them to have direwolves and run the godswood.” Davos had always said that the bravest men he knew were the ones who spoke truth when it served mostly to bare them, so he summons that same courage as he cups his hand around her cheek and says, “I don’t want Dragonstone. I want to marry you.”

The way the corner of Sansa’s lips lift ever so slightly - the way they used to as a child when her father would bend to her will - makes the heavy stone in his stomach sudden lift as light a feather.

She schools them down as if she’s cross, but her eyes give her away, entirely too bright for her bluntness. “So why all this handwringing?”

“Because I want you to choose. I want you to marry who you want to marry, not another contract to secure your freedom.”

“Did you not think that both could result from the same choice?”

Little in Jon’s life has ever worked to his favour; he has learned the hard way that most men never truly get what they want. Fewer women do. “What do you want, Sansa?”

“I want to live and die in Winterfell. I want my children born in its walls. I never want to see King’s Landing ever again,” Sansa says, her voice breaking over the last few words. “I want to marry a good man.”

He does not miss the way Sansa’s eyes widen ever so slightly in shock as he steps forward, his voice fumbling with the question he should have asked her in the first place.

 

\--

 

“Well done,” Tormund says with a smug smile once Jon speaks quietly of Sansa’s answer, sliding a cup of ale across the wooden table to him. “Thank your gods she doesn’t have better taste and marry her as quick as she’ll allow before she changes her mind, Snow.”

Jon takes a deep gulp, oddly comforted by the old name he never hears any longer. It’s more familiar than the new, trueborn name he carries, something so foreign he does not recognize himself in it at all.

Though he lives North of the wall for most of the year, Tormund and a few of his men have permission from Castle Black to trek into Winterfell to trade with the maester for supplies. Jon has been lucky to catch him this time; he is one of the few who marched against the Others with Jon and lived to tell the tale.

“You should warn her about your small pecker, though,” Tormund adds with a hearty chuckle, slapping Jon’s shoulder hard enough that he chokes on the ale.

 

\--

 

Jon finds her outside of the walls, perched on the stump of a tree near the orchards that haven’t bloomed in several name days because of the unrelenting frost. While King’s Landing has pits for its dragons, Winterfell has never housed such a beast, and thus Rhaegal has made his home in one of the deep valleys near the woods. It is there, Rhaegal watching her closely, that Jon finds Sansa.

The dragon inches closer to her as Jon approaches, close enough that Rhaegal's breath near Sansa’s shins cause her heavy skirts to flutter.

“Do you not mind him?” Jon asks. Most of the inhabitants of Winterfell hate his dragon, fear it, but for some reason that Jon cannot understand given she had been the first to cry at Robb’s tales of dragons as a child, Sansa has slowly warmed to the creature. She hadn’t liked Viserion or Drogon - or Rhaegal, really - in the short period they’d been at Winterfell two name days ago, but she seems intrigued by him now. Hesitant, but intrigued.

Drogon and Viserion had hated the North, hated the snow, but strangely, Rhaegal seems happier in the North than he had been in King’s Landing. He’s calmer, more apt to nest than to restlessly streak across the sky as he had in warmer climates. He half-buries himself in the snow to sleep and feeds far less. The townsfolk give him a wide berth, but Jon has watched Sansa sneak ever closer to his nest for the better of a fortnight now.

“No,” Sansa says. “I don’t mind him.”

“Most are scared of him,” Jon says, reaching out to touch Rhaegal’s snout. The scales are smooth and warm under his hand. “Even the heartiest of men fear dragons.”

Sansa’s eyebrow arches in challenge. “Dragons are more honourable than most men, in my experience,” she says primly, her fingers twitching like she’s debating following Jon’s to his snout. His heart aches as she adds, “Besides, I’m no man,” making him think of Arya. As they’ve aged, it’s been a lovely surprise watching Sansa grow more like her sister and Arya more like Sansa in turn. Mayhaps, he thinks, they shall meet in the middle one day.

Sensing her need, he reaches for Sansa’s hand and takes it to Rhaegal, listening to him across the bond they share, willing for his calmness; only a small few have ever touched Rhaegal, as he does not care for strangers. Shockingly, Jon only feels a murmur of pleasure from the dragon when Sansa’s trembling fingers make landfall.

“His eyes remind me of Ghost,” Sansa says, the pads of her fingers running over the smooth scales. “Is that strange?” Rhaegal tilts his head under her hand, his giant eye blinking at her as he if understands the words she speaks.

Though Jon misses Ghost painfully, he’d never think of trying to take him back from Sansa. Now that Jon and Sansa spend most of their days together, the loss of his direwolf doesn’t seem as acute as it had been in the South, even though Ghost’s closeness to Sansa had brought Jon comfort.

“No,” Jon says. Dragons had once seemed strange and unfamiliar to him, too. With Ghost, he’d known without touching him the bond that they would eventually share, an instinctual knowledge he’d like to believe came from his Stark blood. Rhaegal had been different; a slow thaw, but just as profound once warmed. It had not been Daenerys wish for Rhaegal to leave with Jon, but it had been clear in the weeks leading up to his departure that the dragon would not stay in the South without him.

Rhaegal moves into Sansa’s hand like a kitten seeking more warmth, and she grins with unbridled pleasure.

“He feels like the smooth rocks that you, Robb, and Arya used to skip on the water,” Sansa says. Jon still remembers the unusually warm day Arya and Sansa accompanied him, along with Robb and Theon, to the small lake past the thickest woods surrounding Winterfell. Sansa had been mostly quiet, but Arya had not stopped whining about being taught to skip rocks until Jon had taken her arm and helped her skip one of the lightest he could find.

The fact that Sansa omitts Theon from the story is not lost on Jon. It makes his hand tighten on Sansa’s hip in anger. Though Sansa had quietly shared a few of the lesser details of her captivity with the Boltons, it had been Theon, arrived with Daenerys and Yara, who had carefully filled in the blanks, who had admitted being forced to watch Sansa’s rape and debasement. Even though Theon had played a role in her escape, ensured her safe delivery to him, it had been near enough to make Jon separate his treacherous head from his shoulders, regardless of the ire it would have provoked from Daenerys.

But he had made a promise to Sansa not to harm him. In truth, Theon looked more a ghost than any man passed. There was nothing left of the boy Jon grew up with, no real punishment to hand out to a man who was already dead in everything but body.

Feeling Jon’s displeasure, Rhaegal lets out a rough huff of air, and Jon schools down his anger. “Aye, sometimes I find it difficult to hold on for he is far smoother than I had thought when I first saw him. Half the time it’s all I can do to keep from flying off his back.”

The corner of Sansa’s mouth twitches up as she finally pulls her hand away from Rhaegal, who shifts in annoyance at the removal. It had been strange learning dragons are, at times, as needy as Ghost is for affection. Once familiar, they are loyal beasts.

“A raven arrived from King’s Landing this morn,” Sansa says, her voice studiously flat. “The Council will be meeting in a fortnight, and the Queen wishes our marriage to be sealed and consummated before then so she may bring the proclamation of our secession and your legitimization as king to order.”

There is a tenseness in her voice that sets him on edge. In some ways, the marriage is a disinheritance; Jon will be king, and Sansa his queen, but Daenerys is proclaiming the North to be his kingdom, not hers.

Jon uses the hand on her hip to turn her properly to him.

“You know I would never take Winterfell from you, never supercede your will. It belonged to your father, and it belongs to you now. I would rule the North in the way that Aegon rules Westeros,” Jon says. “These years have taught us that the North needs no king with a queen as clever as you.”

This time, Sansa’s smile is so genuine and true that a warm curl of affection churns in his gut. It’s the kind of smile that seemed burned out of her those few months after she escaped from Ramsay, the kind that reminds him of the way she was as a girl: too sheltered for the cruel world that awaited her, but unreservedly happy.

“And to think I used to jape about your inability to speak to women,” Sansa says almost sweetly. Her eyes sweep downward as Rhaegal settles beside them, then back up to look at Jon. “It’s yours too, you know.”

“What is?”

“Winterfell.” She looks back at its walls, at the towers that are slowly being rebuilt to their former glory now that winter has begun to wane and spring is slowly approaching. “ _We_ took it back from the Boltons. It’s ours, Jon.”

Rhaegal lets out a disgruntled huff as Jon leans down swiftly and presses his mouth to Sansa’s.

 

\--

 

The wedding is quiet and practically tiny given the enormity of the match, what it means to the North. When Aegon and Daenerys had wed in the remnants of King’s Landing, it had been a grand affair even though the city had still been broken from the war, licking its wounds. Jon had attended on behalf of the North with Arya, and he felt a weird dread about the entire affair, the coldness of the political match even though he understood that Aegon and Daenerys cared for each other as family.

Jon’s wedding is not cold, despite the last vestiges of the bitter chill that plague the day, like winter has come to greet them one last time before retreating.

Jon and Sansa marry in front of the heart tree with a few witnesses and representatives of the loyal houses during the war. Davos, made Lord Seaworth of the land Jon stripped from the Karstarks after their betrayal with the Boltons, even makes the journey, leaving behind his swelling wife whom Jon is fond of.

The timing means Arya is not able to make it back North for the ceremony, but in their last conversation before he departed from King’s Landing, she had been cross at Daenerys for her interference, and clearly uneasy at the idea of the man she considered a brother wedding her sister, despite the fact that she had been aware of Jon’s feelings for Sansa since she returned from Braavos. In some ways, it is easier with her away for this, even though Jon wishes to have her close always.

When Jon pulls Sansa’s Stark cloak from her shoulders, he does not hand it off to one of his bannermen, as tradition dictates, but instead folds it carefully and gives it back to her, letting Sansa clutch it to herself. Truthfully, he’d rather be placing the same grey and white on her shoulders, but Jon understands the importance of his name. What it means not only to people, but to what has grown between the two of them; another reminder that they are not siblings by blood. They will both be Targaryen in name and Stark in heart.

Regardless, Sansa looks beautiful in red and black, and when he is instructed to kiss her, he tries hard not to smile into the kiss and thoroughly fails when he hears Tormund’s hearty guffaws.

There is to be no bedding ceremony. Neither of them is a maid, and Jon refuses to have his wife pawed at given her horrific treatment at numerous courts. For a woman who has been stripped and beaten at court to be groped and stripped by a hoard is not something that he will abide. The way his declaration is not only accepted but deferred to with complete silence despite its flagrant disregard for tradition is testament to the memory of those who witnessed her treatment by the Boltons. The North loves its traditions, but it loves its Queen more.

They sneak off early in the feast anyway, leaving the men and women of the Northern houses in their cups. Jon leads Sansa to her own chambers, rather than his, and he can feel her surprise in the short resistance at the left turn down the hall. He wants her to feel comfortable for what is to come.

In all the years since they retook Winterfell, Sansa’s never sought to claim the chambers she gave him. Her parents’ room - Ned’s chambers - is still filled with Jon’s meager belongings, a little dusty given its lack of use during his absence. But she also hasn’t taken back use of her own childhood chambers either, the door still sealed shut.

( _They were Ramsay Bolton’s chambers,_ Myrrick, a cook that had survived the Boltons, told him in the kitchens one night during their stay on the way to the war with the Others. He’d stood in the space for hours afterwards, smelling the stale air and remembering the prim and haughty Sansa of his youth sitting on the bed, scowling at whatever ridiculous antics he, Robb, and Theon managed to get themselves wrapped up in.)

Despite Jon’s best efforts, there is awkwardness in the bedchamber at first. Though Sansa’s childhood japes at his expense were never cruel, there was a truth to them: Jon’s never been a quick tongue with women. When he looks on years past, the very few women who have shared his bed have all taken the first step, all far more aggressive and demanding than Sansa is liable to be.

So he is shocked when Sansa’s fingers tighten in his tunic and she tilts her head to kiss him. Despite her boldness, the press of her lips is tentative; they’ve shared a few kisses in the last moon, touches that are less than chaste, but this is the only time he’s tasted true nervousness on her.

“You think louder than a scream, Jon,” Sansa says kindly as their mouths part.

He grins, trying to hide his own nervousness. “What am I thinking then?”

Sometimes he wishes he had her insight, her ability to read people, for she is often a mystery to him. He is clearly not a mystery to her, for she cups his cheek as she says, “I am glad that it is you. Truly.”

Her finger curls against his light beard as he leans in to kiss her, this time urging her mouth open, pressing his tongue against her lip until her own darts out to touch it. Jon lets out a groan at the feel of it. For a moment, he worries that it is too much, too aggressive, but the tension bleeds out of Sansa instantly melts into him, pressing her body snug against his. The awkwardness recedes as they find their rhythm together, her fingers curling into his sleeves as he takes her mouth.

He knows the last man - the only man - she laid with was Bolton, so he is gentle with her as they disrobe, taking her down to her shift while she works at his breeches and tunic, tugging the latter over his head when he’s finished with her laces.

Jon kisses her as he bears her back onto the bed, standing between her splayed knees as he works her shift slowly up over her body. The light from the fire and the low-lit lantern on the table near the bed hints at the curves under the thin fabric. His heart races at the thought of touching them, of putting his mouth to them.

She is so beautiful. When he finally strips her out of her shift, he steps right into the cradle of the thighs, slides a hand to her back and leans down to kiss her again.

The feel of raised lines under his palm has him sucking in a breath and stepping back. His hand slips down her skin and the marks go on and on...

Jon thinks back to the night in the tent, the night before they took Winterfell back, when Sansa told him she’d end her life before returning to Ramsay. It had frightened him at the time - not only the realization of the consequences should he fail, but at the thought of what had been done to her to provoke such a promise from a girl with more stubborn determination than any man he’d met. He’d seen evidence of both Joffrey and Ramsay’s cruelty to Sansa before - errant scars on her arm and neck - but he’d never laid with her and she’d been careful to wear gowns that covered her back.

It is the first time he has seen her naked, and her body is map of absolute brutality.

“Sansa,” he breathes, his hand stilling on thin lines that feel almost delicate under his palm.

Though he’d given her the satisfaction of ending Ramsay’s life, it’s moments like this where Jon truly wishes he’d caved Ramsay’s skull in with his fists. He wishes he’d been in King’s Landing to slice Joffrey Lannister and all his honourless knights into pieces. Littlefinger had died a gruesome death, and though Jon knows Sansa suspects he is behind it, in truth he is not. Much like the destruction of House Frey, Jon looked upon the mutilated corpse of Petyr Baelish and saw the anguish of Arya Stark.

Jon can sense that she knows where his thoughts go, and she tenses, tucking her arms over her breasts, her mouth set in a grim line. It nearly cleaves his heart straight in two.

Instead, he carefully takes her hand and presses her fingers to the worst of the cuts to his chest, the prominent rise of scar tissue right over his heart, the wound that had likely ended his life. “Do you think me broken?” he asks, holding her hand over the gruesome scar.

She looks aghast, hurt at the suggestion. “Of course not.”

“What do you think?”

“That you are strong,” Sansa says, staring at her fingers trailing over the raised flesh. The cut is curved cruelly, like the brother who left it curled his wrist as he stroked out. Watching Sansa’s fingers makes him remember touching it when he woke naked on the table, brought back by the red woman’s magic.

“Then how can you believe that I would think anything less of you?”

Sansa’s eyes snap to Jon’s, the blue as unreadable as it ever is.

Though they have both been betrayed, he knows the wounds she carries are far deeper than any of the wounds to his chest. It’s been many years, but she still flinches at times when touched unexpectedly, guards herself in a way she hadn’t as a girl. None of them are the same people they’d been at Winterfell, and though Jon has enjoyed getting to know and beginning to love the Sansa who found him at the Wall, it hurts every time he remembers what it cost her.

“You’re a wolf,” he says, trying to tell her with plain words the feelings he will never be able to express with the eloquence they deserve. _Never be ashamed of the things that make you strong._

This time, when he reaches for her other hand, tugging it away from her breast, she doesn’t fight him, letting him slide her back onto the furs, until he has her exactly where he wants her. The trust she grants him nearly takes his breath away, and his sole aim tonight is to prove himself worthy of it.

When he sets his mouth to her cunt, she lets out a gasped _Jon_ in such a shocked voice that it reminds him of her lack of experience. He does not like to linger on her experiences before him, mostly because he suspects she’s never known any kindness with men, but given how she moves under him, the way her thighs twitch against his ears, he thinks he is the first to taste her like this. It’s thrilling in its own way, getting to show her how _good_ it can be.

Jon gives up trying to use his hands to touch her, open her up, when it becomes clear that he needs them to hold down her hips, which refuse to stay still, bucking into his mouth when she tries to chase his teasing mouth. As soon as he pins them, her hand goes flying into his hair to grip, then shoots away near as quick.

“It’s okay,” Jon says, finally looking up at her. He nearly spends at the sight of her: red-faced, flushed down to the tops of her breasts, nipples tight, her mouth open and panting. “I do not mind.” He licks his lips, chasing the taste of her, and watches how it makes her breathing hitch. “I like it.”

Sansa makes a strange humming noise, like words are beyond her, then lifts her hand to brush the hair out of his face, curling up enough that she can tuck it behind his ear sweetly. It is the affection of the gesture that has Jon ducking his head back down to her cunt, sealing his mouth over it with a gentle suckle that has Sansa letting out a broken sob.

It doesn’t take much longer. She chants his name with a broken throat as she peaks, her fingers gripping his curls possessively. He laps at her gently as she comes down, her thighs ripe with tiny tremors that chase her pleasure, until she tugs at his hair urging him up her body.

He kisses the mole above her hip bone, a few of the more vicious wounds that look like they were made by a knife on her abdomen, the beautiful curve of her breast.

“Jon,” she murmurs again as he presses his hips against her, urging her knees up and taking himself in hand. She’s perfectly wet against his cock as he slowly pushes into her, watching her face for any sign of discomfort. But her face is placid and relaxed, and when he bottoms out, their hips joined together, she finally opens her eyes.

They are not as unreadable now. The black of her eyes has nearly eclipsed the blue, blown wide with pleasure. “You feel perfect,” he says, leaning down to whisper it against her ear.

It does not take long; it has been years since Jon was last with a woman, and watching Sansa come undone beneath his working hips makes him feel like the green boy he’d been leaving Winterfell. She looks shocked by her own pleasure, unbound, making the most delightful noises as she digs her fingers into his ribs.

He spills in her as he listens to the breathy whines she makes in the aftermath of her own peak.

 

\--

 

Brynn is born nearly ten moons after their wedding, so quickly that he’s not sure they didn’t make her that very night. She comes out looking like a squalling red ball of screaming anger, and Jon feels absolutely cored.

Sansa had kept the babe a secret, even from him, until she had been nearly four moons along. “Sam warned me that the first pregnancy after taking moon tea can be fragile, even if it has been years,” Sansa explained to him at the time, Jon’s hands cupping her lightly swelling belly in wonder.

It had not been an easy pregnancy. Sansa had bled so badly during the sixth moon that Sam had warned Jon that she would most likely lose the babe. Jon only feels relief upon entering the birthing chamber to find Sansa looking spent from labour, but happy. His dreams and waking moments have been plagued by remembrances of Sam's mumbled confession after the danger had passed that he'd briefly worried for Sansa’s life alongside the babe’s. Jon had spent the following three moons before the heart tree for so many hours the soil has dented likely permanently from his knees.

Brynn looks nothing like Jon; she’s got a dusting of her mother’s tully hair on her mostly bald head, but has the violet eyes of Jon’s Targaryen father. “It only means she will take after you more in temperament,” Sansa says as if in consolation, but Jon doesn’t give one care. In truth, he’d be thrilled if Brynn takes after her mother in all things.

Watching Sansa with her in the weeks after her birth only makes the loss of his mother feel more acute. Ned always loved him as much as Robb or any of his other children, but for much of his life, Jon envied his then-siblings for the blind love that Catelyn showed them but never him. Hers was a softer love than Ned’s, hands that cooled Robb’s brow when he caught spotted fever and brushed away Sansa’s tears when her favourite dress was torn. When he watches Sansa tend to Brynn, cooing at her and soothing tears from exhaustion, he knows his daughter will never want for that kind of love.

Brynn’s birth keeps them from King’s Landing when Arya finally agrees to marry Aegon. Though Jon contemplated attending the wedding in Sansa’s absence at her request, he’d received a sternly worded letter from Arya after she learned she’d become an aunt. _Stay home with your new babe, you idiot, I’m just parading around in a stupid dress anyway,_ had made him laugh, and her promise to visit her new niece as soon as she could had made him long to see her again.

Though Sansa has sworn she will never set foot in King’s Landing again, she looks pained as she says, “I’d have gone just to see Arya in a _dress_ again,” trying to make it a jape. “Though gods know she’d probably marry in dirty breeches just to spite me.”

Jon laughs, reaching over to touch his finger to the working cheek of his daughter as she suckles at Sansa’s breast. She’d seemed a bit unnerved the first time Jon had walked in on her feeding Brynn, but now that she knows what pleasure it brings him to watch the babe at her breast, she obliges him. It’s sweet the way her cheeks still heat at first, a light blush across her pale skin, even though he’s watched Brynn feed a half-hundred times now.

“I don’t know what took them so long,” Jon says. “He must have asked her a half-dozen times since her last name day.”

“She was angry with Daenerys. At first I thought it was because of her request we marry, but I think it was more out of hurt for herself. That Daenerys was passing her off to Aegon to produce an heir, that what had transgressed between them was Daenerys plotting,” Sansa says, switching the babe to her other breast. When Jon’s eyebrows scrunch together in confusion, Sansa continues with a put-upon sigh. “You cannot have been blind to the way they looked at one another. I told Arya to be careful, that to have two dragons fight over you was courting death, but you know Arya. Frankly, I think she enjoys the danger of it.”

Jon sits gobsmacked. Daenerys had taken an instantaneous liking to Arya when they’d first met near the Vale, and their closeness - _like sisters_ , he’d thought harmlessly at the time - had been fodder for the men for a short while. It had only made Aegon’s request seem all the more cruel when Daenerys had told Jon of it. But now, in hindsight…

“Truly? Arya and _Daenerys_?” He’d seen plenty of wildling women bed one another, but south of the Wall, it is not as common. He is shocked all the more for the banality with which Sansa speaks of it; the Sansa of old would have been thoroughly scandalized by Arya bedding a woman. It is another reminder of how different she has become.

“Men,” Sansa says with a light chuckle, rolling her eyes.

Soon, Brynn’s quiet suckles fade into silence as the babe falls asleep.

“Can I take her?” Jon asks after Sansa shifts Brynn off her breast. He’s aware that most men don’t tend to swaddled babes, but he loves the weight of her in his arms, the way Sansa looks at him when he holds her. Ned always held his children, which had caused much tittering amongst the servants when Jon was young as Ned’s father had not held any of his babes a day past the birthing bed.

Sansa nods and stands, carefully placing their slumbering babe in his arms as to not disturb her. Smiling brightly at him, she leans down to brush a finger over Brynn’s tiny auburn-capped head before running her fingers through Jon’s curls, raking her nails against his skull. A shiver runs through his body and beside his chair, Ghost letting out a low whine, shifting his body closer to Sansa and the hearth.

It’s only when Sansa returns back to her own chair, carefully re-lacing the front of her gown, that the smile begins to slip off of her face, her eyes drawn into the roaring fire in front of them.

“What worries you?”

Sansa turns to look at him, her mouth curving up, but not into a genuine smile. “Nothing.”

“It does not seem like nothing.” Brynn wakes and fusses a bit in Jon’s arms, her little fist coming loose from the blanket Sansa has wrapped her in. Jon gives her a finger to grip and she settles again, eyelids drooping and lips smacking.

“When I was young, all I wanted was to get away from here. I loved Mother and Father, all of my siblings - even Arya when she wasn’t being a nuisance. But I knew I’d have to marry, to leave Winterfell one day for somewhere else to be a bride, to please a husband. I wanted to marry a prince, to live in a palace not buried in snow, to be a Southern queen.” Sansa shakes her head, her smile gone sad. “All Arya ever wanted was to stay in the North and play at swords. Now look at us.”

A sudden wave of worry flows through Jon, as irrational at it is. “Is this--”

Sansa holds up a hand. “No,” she says resolutely, like she knows exactly where Jon’s thoughts go. “This is the first time since I left Winterfell with Father that I’ve felt truly happy. All I wanted after Father died was to come back here and live in peace. That never changed.” Her fingers clench in her skirts, her knuckles going white. “It just bugs me to think back. I hate the thoughts I used to carry. I thought the North something my Mother had to bear for Father. I wanted the Southern song of honourable knights and ladies in silk. I trusted people because I was afraid of being sent back here, of losing what I thought I had so desperately wanted. I was so _blind_.”

“You were a child,” Jon says, trying to remind Sansa she was barely more than a babe herself when she left for King’s Landing. She had grown tall and sharp early, like Robb, so it’s easy to forget how young she’d been when she’d left her home. “You knew no different. None of us did. We were all sheltered at Winterfell.”

It is quiet for a few moments after, Sansa’s face twisted up like she wants to say more. Though they’ve spoken of much over the years, Sansa guards her feelings, and tends not to focus on the girl she had been when they parted as children. He feels the weight of her regrets some days, she wear them so plainly.

“Father should have told her,” Sansa blurts out, her cheeks flushing bright enough that Jon can see it in the low light. “It was cruel to make her think he had betrayed her, to make us all think that. I know they were not close at first, but there were _years_ he could have told her. Mother never would have broken Father’s trust. She would have protected you if she had known the truth.” He’s long known Sansa twists herself into pieces over her mother more than even her father, whose death she feels responsible for even though Jon knows that Ned’s fate was sealed the moment Robert died.

“Sansa.”

“I think of Brynn.” She is staring at the babe now, her eyes glassy. “I imagine her in your place, growing up without a mother in a house where she was treated as ill as you.”

Jon’s face softens. “I’m sorry if I’ve left you thinking my childhood was unhappy. It wasn’t.”

“Mother never had a kind word for you.”

“I never needed one,” Jon explains. Catelyn never cared for him, but she wasn’t unnecessarily cruel to him, which is more than Jon can say for most bastard children raised by their noble fathers, rare as it is. “I had you and Robb and Arya and Bran and Rickon.” He leaves Theon’s name in the grave, where it belongs. “She treated me as kindly as her heart allowed. I never went hungry or unclothed.”

There had been moments of kindness when he had been young enough that he can barely remember them now. But as soon as he’d begun to grow, look more and more like Ned as Robb into his Tully looks, she’d scarcely been able to meet his eye.

“She would thank you,” Sansa says. “For what you’ve done for me. For trying to save Rickon. For finding Bran, bringing him home to live his last days of peace here. For protecting Arya. For giving me back my home. Even if we’d never learned of your true parents, she would have been grateful.”

“I need no thanks.” Jon carefully rocks his daughter, trying to catch Sansa’s eye. He wants no thanks for fighting for his family, for a path that has given him a family of his own.

Sansa’s voice is still melancholy when she stares into the flame and murmurs, “Sometimes I feel that I have lived a thousand years.”

 

\--

 

“Brynn!” he hears Sansa scream from her chambers a few moons after Brynn’s second name day.

It takes him all of a few breaths to make it down the hall and through Sansa’s chamber doors. Jon isn’t sure at first what is going on, Sansa sobbing as she flaps her skirts over something. Suddenly, he sees a pudgy arm emerge from the skirts, smoke trailing out of the fabric, and realizes that Sansa is attempting to smother something on fire. That whatever it is, his daughter is caught in it.

“Sansa!” Jon yells, fear making him close the last of the distance to where his wife is sprawled on the floor, fighting with her dress. At last, Brynn emerges from the darkened wool, her face red and screams piercing.

“I turned my back on her for a second and she had climbed into the fire,” Sansa sobs, carefully turning her daughter over in her lap, trying to settle Brynn’s limbs in a way that might be more comfortable than the haphazard way she is splayed in her skirts. Brynn’s dress is badly burnt, the left side of the skirt and bodice mostly ash and still smoking lightly.

“She was in the hearth?” Jon asks in shock, and Sansa chokes out a horrible sob that makes her entire upper body shake.

Brynn is wailing inconsolably, and Jon’s blood cools a bit the moment he realizes that her tears are not from pain, but rather from the shock and fear of her mother’s cries and rough handling. When he touches Brynn’s unmarred skin, he feels nothing of the heat that has Sansa flinching, covering her hands with the cloth of her skirt so she can clutch at her daughter.

“She is all right, sweetling,” he says to Sansa, trying to calm her to help calm the babe, but Sansa just keeps sucking in horribly shaky breaths.

“ _Mama_ ,” Brynn hiccups reaching up to try and touch her mother, who flinches away knowing her touch would likely scald. Instead, Jon catches her little fingers and brings them up to his lips, pressing frantic kisses to them in a bid to calm her. It works, Brynn’s tears slowing on her cheeks, drying faster than they should on her skin, still warmed from the fire.

“Sansa,” Jon breathes in horror when her hands finally emerge from behind her skirts. The skin is red and burnt, likely from reaching into the flames to grab their daughter. Jon yells at the chambermaid who appears to fetch the maester, wrapping his arms around Sansa, who refuses to let go of their fussing babe.

That night, Brynn safely tucked into bed and Sansa’s burns treated and wrapped by Sam, Jon gently unlaces her gown, careful as he brings the wool sleeves over the bandages on her hands.

“She is a dragon,” Sansa whispers as Jon presses his lips to her bare shoulder, taking her burnt hands into his own.

 

\--

 

Halfway through Brynn’s third year, Sansa’s moonblood stops for a second time, her lithe waist beginning to thicken again. While the prospect of another child fills the both of them with obvious joy, it is tempered by the realization that this child is already a hostage in the womb.

Jon often wakes to Sansa curled around her burgeoning tummy, her arms caged around it like she can protect the babe. Jon’s fear is twofold: the worry of King’s Landing claim on this babe, and the memory of Sansa’s blood soaking their featherbed the last time she carried a child.

Luckily, the ills that plagued Sansa the last time Jon got a child on her do not return. While she suffers from mother’s stomach terribly in the first few months, she does not bleed, and Sam is happy with the growth of the babe. But the news only does so much to soothe Sansa, who grows quieter as her belly swells bigger.

“It is not lost to us yet,” Jon says, trying to console his wife. “Even if it is to be heir, it won’t be brought to King’s Landing until it’s of age. That is many years for another babe to take its place.”

Though there had been no announcement, Arya had revealed a pregnancy to Sansa in their correspondence shortly after her marriage to Aegon; she had lost the babe in the fourth moon. Since then, Jon knows the letters between the sisters have carefully avoided the talk of swelling. Though Arya asks after her niece often, offering to teach Brynn how to properly wield a sword mostly to get a rise out of Sansa, Sansa guards her sister’s feelings from afar, such a strange new dynamic between sisters who did little but needle one another as children.

Last Jon had heard, Arya was in Dorne with Aegon, who had spent the last two years dutifully touring his kingdom, leaving Daenerys in King’s Landing. But that had been nearly eight moons ago, and while Sansa has kept correspondence with Arya, she had gone quiet after Jon’s last letter to her.

So the raven arriving with an announcement of not one but two births is a complete shock to both of them.

“Arya has given birth to twins,” Jon says, reading the parchment, turning to watch Sansa’s mouth fall open in surprise. “A boy and a girl.” He reads the next words and a lump forms in his throat.

“What?” Sansa asks, concern peppering her voice.

“She named the boy Robb,” Jon says, caught between disbelief and melancholy. A decidedly northern name for a child born into a very southern land. There’s even a brush of shock to Sansa’s sad face. He can’t imagine the name being favoured by either his half-brother or his aunt, but if the years have taught Jon anything, it is that Arya is stubborn beyond reason. Likely Aegon and Daenerys were simply placated by an heir of Targaryen blood, if not by name. Or, as Jon has come to believe, Arya’s hold over the two has grown ever stronger over the last few years.

“Robb,” Sansa echoes, her eyes growing glassy. They had only spoken of names for their first babe after she was born, and it had almost been a relief that she had not been a boy. They had both quietly agreed not to give their children names of ghosts that still haunted them, though Sansa had quietly admitted her would not mind naming their first daughter Lyanna. “Arya wrote me less than two moons ago. Why did she not mention she was with child?”

He reaches down to tuck a loose lock of hair behind Sansa’s ear. “Likely she was being cautious because of the last.” Though Jon believe this is likely the case, he also wonders if the babes were kept secret this time out of deference to Sansa, so thick with child n

ow that she can barely move around Winterfell without Jon at her arm. It had not been a secret how the prospect of giving up a child to King’s Landing had terrified Sansa, and she had been lighter in spirit when Arya had divulged she had been carrying a babe. Its loss had broken her: the pain for her sister in quiet, profound mourning and the fear of what this loss meant for her own children. Jon had told Arya of the difficulty Sansa had carrying her first child, he knows without hesitation that she held back out of worry for the fret Sansa would carry over Arya’s babes in the womb.

“The girl?”

“What?” Jon asks, torn from his thoughts.

“The girl. What did they name her?”

“Rhaenys.”

“One after a brother, one after a sister,” Sansa says quietly, her hand cupping her distended belly through her dress. When Jon covers her warm hand with his own, she says, “I miss her. I never thought I’d ever miss her this much, but the North sometimes feels empty without her. I look at the yard and see her playing at swords with you and Robb sometimes. I worry about her constantly in that place.”

Sansa had given no sweet words over her promise never to set foot in King’s Landing again; part of her terror over the coming babe had been knowing that the only thing in the world capable of bringing her back to that place was if her child was taken there. That it is no longer a concern sets Jon’s mind at ease. “We will extend an invitation when the babes are old enough to visit their mother’s home.” When Sansa’s eyes fill with hope, Jon adds, “Arya is more wolf than any of us. Don’t think those children won’t know Winterfell. Give her a few years and they’ll be underfoot constantly.” Jon pats her hand gently. “And don’t worry for Arya. I’ve never seen a man as besotted as Aegon.”

 _Wolves and dragons were meant to balance each other,_ Jon hears in his head.

“Aegon loves her, but I think Daenerys knows her heart best,” Sansa says.

Jon had visited Arya in King’s Landing a few moons after she lost her babe and found a sister more lost than he’d ever seen before. It had been at Daenerys’s urging that Arya had left King’s Landing to travel with Aegon. _She wasn’t meant to be kept in dresses within walls,_ Daenerys had said to Jon confessed his worry over Arya’s deteriorating state. He’d been surprised to find her worry echoing his own, a strange sadness over the loss of a babe that wasn’t hers. _A dragon may adjust to the dark of a keep, but a wolf will always long for the forest. A little adventure will set her heart right, just watch._

“I think you might be right.”

 

\--

 

A moon’s turn after the raven arrives, a large gilded chest appears at the gates of Winterfell under a dozen armed guards flying Targaryen banners. Eithan is tucked against Sansa’s chest, letting out impatient whines as Jon breaks the wax seal on the letter. He hauls an inquisitive Brynn into his lap, her dirty hands reaching toward the parchment, trying to steal it from Jon’s grasp.

“Papa,” Brynn says in annoyance when on won’t let her grab onto it, and he worries that the next step will be her hands, covered in the winterberry preserve, reaching out for his beard instead, tugging it a favourite hobby of hers. He kisses her ear and tells her to be patient, smiling at her beautifully frustrated face. She may look like Sansa and have Targaryen eyes, but her personality is leaning more to Arya with every passing day.

“What does it say?” Sansa asks, giving their son a finger to suck on to stave off his cries. This babe is all Stark in looks, from the grey eyes to the black hair that is already unruly even though he has so little of it. So far, he’s been a much quieter babe than his sister was at his age, and Sansa has said many times that this one takes after Jon in all things.

“Give me a second of peace, all of you, and I will tell you,” Jon grouses, lightly tickling at Brynn’s side until she squeals and leans back, her head resting against his chest. She stares up at him with such affection, her violet eyes wide with happiness, that he feels a thousand years from the man he’d been at the Wall, surrounded by cold, destined to live and die in the Black.

Jon finally looks down, reading the words out loud to them.

_For my little Dragons in the North._  
_Remind your father that I am rarely wrong.  
_ _Daenerys_

Inside the chest, two large eggs sit side by side.


End file.
